Supporters of a tax-financed, single-payer health system claim that it would remedy inequities in health outcomes by providing equal access to health care for low-income families, but a new survey by Harvard University’s School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund found lower-income people have much worse health regardless of financing methods.
The countries run the gamut from the U.K. (physicians are government employees and hospitals are government owned) to the U.S. (voluntary private insurance for most with government programs for the poor and elderly.) Canada, New Zealand and Australia have private-government hybrids, though with a strong government presence.
None of the systems is ideal.
The United Kingdom has the least out-of-pocket costs, but it has the longest waiting times. The United States is just the opposite. The rest fall somewhere in between on both measures.
Source: Greg Scandlen (NCPA senior fellow in health policy), Health Care in Five Nations, Brief Analysis No. 397, June 17, 2002, National Center for Policy Analysis.
For BA text http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba397/
For Commonwealth study http://www.cmwf.org/programs/international/schoen_fivenation_ib_542.pdf
For International Comparisons of Health Systems http://www.ncpa.org/iss/hea
FMF Policy Bulletin\18 June 2002
